Signs

Signs affect us all and convey the emotions of their creators. They feed our need for order and sometimes even the seemingly unprovocative can bring about powerful emotions in us. Makeshift signs convey greater emotion and are easier to fall into rebellion against for they express an individual’s spur-of-the-moment feelings about a particular subject or situation. Strangely, working in an office, the signs here seem to express feelings of passive aggression between colleagues. It is a strange concept that the office environment could be seen as a total institution in the sense Erving Goffman described, but it can be – at the very least in the sense that all individuals within it are bound by the rules of the organization. And they rebel against this control in their own ways; by entering into conversations about their colleagues, constantly clamouring for attention and putting up signs against practices they believe to be wrong or for practices they believe to be right. They assert their authority, autonomy and their perceived rights to individuality because an office, like any other total institution, is made up of individuals with individual agendas – it is a buzzing microcosm housing love and latent aggression bubbling under the surface, waiting to spring forth. Gingerly peel back the top layer and witness the eruption.

Peace, love and revolutions…